delorme

I would also like to see Delorme implemented, the 3D Topoquads map software is what I use for offroad nav, very detailed and useful. The maps are actual raster images of USGS 7.5 Min quad sheets scanned and pasted seamlessly. The Topo USA maps mentioned earlier are not as detailed, but do cover multi-state areas.

I'm just going to say that I'm determined to build the same thing but better, and that if you provide it- well, I'll just have to draw on my financial reserves to underprice you until I have the market share I want.

I'm just going to say that I'm determined to build the same thing but better, and that if you provide it- well, I'll just have to draw on my financial reserves to underprice you until I have the market share I want.

True Solid State Disks are just not cost effective. Talking hundreds/GB. And most that are an IDE 40/44 pin-compatible 2.5 form-factor are mil-spec. and over priced accordingly.

Boot from flash drives (i.e. Compact Flash) is just stupid. Windows' continual pagefile/hiberfile writes will burn them up in no time. You could try to implement SD on a CF bootable platform using XPE and the Enhanced Write Filter that MSFT licensed. But that is a static-state OS hibernate once/resume many compromise. Any updates/changes to the static runtime image are cumbersome and difficult to deploy to customers. And you still would need a media drive.

4-6 GB microdrives are fairly shock resistant but would still require a media drive which isn’t necessarily as shock and temperature resistant. So you could boot the OS and SD but then have no access to NAV maps, MP3's etc.

A good fairly ruggedized shipping alternative are the Hitachi Endurastar drives. They’re slow but shock and temperature resistant, have fluid bearings and have impact predictive logic built in.

The bright spot on the horizon for mobile applications are hybrid hard drives that use volatile RAM caching offload to allow the disk to be spun-down for a good portion of the time that an ordinary disk would otherwise be spun-up and active. But to take advantage of that you’ll need Vista (or its embedded offshoot) and with that comes DX10, top-heavy DRM and Vista Avalon GUI video requirements etc.

Long and short of it is there is currently no cost-effective way to bullet-proof mobile platforms for in-car computing without defense-appropriations-sized budgets. Everything spinning at any RPM is a failure waiting to happen and price/performance/reliability trade-offs continue to apply.